Life Throes

October 6

Sophia decides at least one person should stay with the angel. So, the What the Friends Adventuring Group slip up. Qiandai and Lou Dromat volunteer to stay, and Sophia and Volker decide to explore. They head down the last fork in the tunnel.

The first door Sophia and Volker come to is unlocked. Sophia cracks it open. Inside is a library, there are tables and shelves stacked with books, some look like they haven’t been touched in decades. Volker seems intrigued, but Sophia decides there is nothing of interest here and moves on. Although he agrees that nothing in there will help their mission at the moment, Volker makes a note to tell Qiandai about the library, as there might be something in there worth finding.

They make their way down the hall until the find another door. Sophia finds more jail bars. These, however, have no enchantments, and they are holding humans, about twenty of them, chained to the wall. Volker walks in, Sophia stands guard in the hall, and the prisoners flinch at every movement he makes. He tries to calm their fears and maybe get some information from them, but they are all too skittish to speak. After awhile he finally gets one person to spit out they don’t remember what happened to them, they just woke up and they were bound and jailed. Volker finds that to be an all too familiar story.

Sophia, just outside the door, hears footfalls, faint but coming toward them. She pokes her head out and sees a human, dressed in the same robes as the sorcerers they encounter at the cave’s exit, walk down the hall. He enters the library.

Back in the angel’s prison, Qiandai and Lou sitting around in the front room, where small rivers of kobold blood run along the floor. Qiandai decides to take a nap and lays down to sleep. After ten minutes she decides to get up and leave to investigate the caves. As they are walking out the room she receives a telepathic message from Volker informing her of the human prisoners. She decides following them is a good a way to go as any. Lou follows.

Sophia sees them turn down the hallway and find their way into the library. She sighs to herself. She gets Volker’s attention to tell him she needs to warn the others about the sorcerer that enter the library a little bit ago. Volker assures the prisoners he will return, and while he is doing that Sophia sees hear the sound of stone on stone, moving and getting closer.

Volker and Sophia rush back into the library. Sophia makes note of the fact that there are now candles lit. Lou is standing there, but Qiandai is gone. She has made her way down the rows of bookshelves. Sophia goes to find her, and she finds her climbing on one of the bookshelves, flipping through different books and scrolls.

There is a crash. Sophia rushes to see a gargoyle barreling down the aisle, right toward them. Qiandai climbs up. Sophia bolts for the other end of the aisle. The gargoyle barrels around the corner. Lou, who was able to come up behind it, swings his greatsword, missing. Sophia fires an arrow, hitting it square but not doing much. Qiandai jumps over to the next shelf, and the gargoyle swipes at her, only just missing.

Volker, on the other side of the room having backed away when he saw the gargoyle, encounters the sorcerer, who seems just as surprised as he does. That does not stop him from extending a hand that looks to be shrouded in black dust. Volker fires a ray of frost, but not before the sorcerer is able to touch him with the black hand. Pain sears through Volker’s shoulder and he fires another ray of frost killing the sorcerer. All the while, the others continue to assault the gargoyle, hitting it with weapons and magic, finally pummeling it into pebbles.

Exhausted and wounded, the WTF group decides they need to regroup, and head back to the angel’s prison. Where they find him dead, his throat cut.

October 6

Qiandai sings a lullaby, but none of the skeletons move until Sophia steps into the room, and in unison all six skeletons draw scimitars. Sophia steps to the right, Volker and Lou Dromat follow. Qiandai stays behind the door threshold and casts sleep. Three skeletons immediately fall down. The others are made quick work of, Lou and Volker destroy the first, Lou’s sword, without missing a beat, turns the second’s lower vertebra into powder, cutting it in half, and Sophia puts an arrow into the sternum of the third.
p. While the other three skeletons are asleep, they deliver a coup de grace to each, scattering bones across the floor. At the precise moment their weapons land the walls around them begin to shake. Seeming to originate from the other side of the stone door, it feels like something is trying pull the city down on top of them.

With the guards out of the way-and the bodies looted, the What the Friends Adventuring Group turns their attention toward the stone door. Volker inspects the sigils more closely. He’s surprised to find the spell to be fairly rudimentary, considering what he suspects to be imprisoned behind it. He determines it should be fairly easy to open. The walls again shudder violently.

Lou tries simply opening the door and pushes on it, but he realizes it pulls open when he sees the hinges on the outside. He takes one of the scimitars looted off again-dead skellys, and with great effort, lifts the massive hinge pins out. It takes the combine strength of WTF to knock the door down, but with an incredible crash and a lot of dust the it topples.

As the dust settles a figure comes into view. A male humanoid with silver hair, and porcelain white skin caked in dirt sits bended knee. His hands are bound above his head with chains that could hold a team of elephants, and in front of him are steel bars with a single gate. The man thrashes on the chains, causing another earthquake. As he moves the group can see two long gashes down his back, which confirm Volker’s suspicions that this was the angel meant to rendezvous with Archon.

WTF inspects the door to the cell. The sigils on this one are indecipherable to Volker, and he asked the angel if he knows what they say or if he can break them. The angel replies that it is strong magic and he would need to read the sigils to know how they work, but the chains will not let him reach.

The hinges on this door do not budge, and the group tries slamming everything they can against the lock on the door to open it. It does nothing but dull another scimitar and splinter a crossbow bolt. Even when Volker freezes the lock nothing happens.

Volker has an idea that maybe the scroll Archon gave him could help them break the lock. Unfortunately, just as he mage hands it over to the angel two squads of kobolds attack. The others move quickly to engage the kobolds to let Volker concentrate on holding the scroll. The angel begins reading as fast as he can, but he seems to have trouble with it.

The three others take positions behind the fallen door, both to create a choke point and to use the door as an obstacle the kobolds have to over come. One squad advances on the door and the other takes a defensive position around the outer, wooden door. The advancing kobolds are made short work of. The ones who make it past Sophia’s longbow are subjected to Lou greatsword, and Qiandai decides to test out her new deck of cards. She draws the Three of Spades and tosses it out between the WTF and the last remaining kobold in the advancing party. Three large, bearded clerics appear out of thin air and begin to sing a chorus of hymns which unnerves the lone kobold, and he flees just quick enough that he others can not slaughter him as he passes.

Before the next squad even has time to prepare for the attack, in secession: Sophia puts and arrow through the eye of one, Qiandai a bolt through the eye of another, and even Volker casts a ray of frost through the doorway turning another one into a lizard-sicle. Lou charges the last two with such force he runs the kobold through the gut, to the hilt. Keep his momentum he swings his greatsword with the grace normally found in a rapier wielder and cleaves the last kobold clean through the midsection. And three kobold pieces fly into the corner.
p. Back at the cell, the angel is able to tell the scroll details extremely advanced magic and is difficult to read. However, it is a spell of some type of item summoning, and it will not help them open the doors. In his anger the angel once again pulls on his chains looking to bring the whole place down. Volker wonders what a angel’s penis looks like, though he is unable to get a glimpse as he thrashes.

Lou wonders if they might be able to dissolve the bars, and he brings in one of the kobold stomach to cut open. But before he is able some blood drips on the bars and the sigils written on them begin to glow. As the eureka moment dawns, they each grab a dead kobold body and throw as much blood onto the cell wall as they can. The lock clicks.

Volker inspects the humongous chains and is once again unable to understand the sigils. The angel informs him that the chains are even more advanced then the cell wall was and would take true death to unlock.

The What the Friends group decides that should be easy enough. They promise the angel they shall return, and go out in search of another kobold to slaughter.

October 6

The human shoots at Sophia more to distract than to kill, but she is able to deftly jump from roof to roof as she dodges the bolts. Until she hits a slippery shingle and slips off the edge, catching herself before she hits the ground. She jumps down and continues pursuit just in time to see the human enter the backdoor of a shop.

Careful when she followed, she checked the windows in the alley. She saw no one inside. Quietly as she could she steps inside. The moment she opens the door she is blasted with the smell of new leather and stain. She looks around at the old tannery equipment, thinking the human might be hiding among the shelves.

As she creeps along she can hear two men out front who seem to be haggling. They do not seem to notice her or the other guy before her. After searching the entire storeroom the human is not found.

What Sophia does find is an unlocked trap door. Opening the door it look like a bottomless pit. She can not see the bottom. She attaches a length of rope to a hook at the top of the whole, climbs down, and at the end of the fifty foot rope can only just now see the bottom with her torch. Deciding it’s best to have some back up, she returns to the market square.

Regrouped and debriefed, the group decides a party name. They decide to call themselves the What the Friends Adventuring Group, or WTF Group for short.

Before WTF moves out Qiandai runs back to the shop with her share of the wolf pelt money. She buys the Horn of Valhalla, and when she returns to her friends she shows off the silver horn. Tells them it’s a powerful magic item that can summon barbarians to fight for them.

WTF group decides on a plan of action. The head down to the city walls to inform the City Guard of the impending kobold attack. Mostly, they just get in the way. The guards know of the attack, and are a little offended that this group of people would think the Guard so inept they don’t know about the largest gathering of kobolds in history massing less than a week away from the city gates.

After that debacle, Sophia show the group the way to the tanner’s shop, and the trap door leading underneath the city. As they walk Qiandai fawns over her new horn, and Volker wonders if the barbarians will be sexy.

They are able to tie their ropes together to reach the bottom of the pit. As they slowly make their way down Lou, the last to climb down, begins to slip. He slams into Qiandai who, in turn, slams into Volker. They slip down the rope almost falling to their deaths,’ but at the last second they are able to catch themselves only sustaining minimal damage.

The hole lead down into a tunnel. Sophia can tell which way the human went, but the tracks are not super fresh anymore. There is nothing else down there except a eighty foot length of rope coiled up underneath just below the hole in the ceiling. Sophia grabs it up, and they all begin walking in the direction of the tracks.

WTF walks for hours, most of the day they figure. The tunnels gradually become less muddy and wet, and start to look like they may be intelligently made, but Sophia can’t tell since the tunnel is made out of limestone these might still be natural caverns.

They come to several forks in the road, taking the left way each time. Mostly out of consistency, because the ground is hard enough here that they have lost the human’s trial. Then Sophia sees a light source up ahead. There are two torches hanging on the walls. They don’t hear or see anyone, but they walk cautious all the same. Once they get to the torches they can see two more torches a ways up.

They move cautiously, unsure of what they will find in the light. The farther they go the more torches there are. They are lining the halls and lead to a fork with four different pathways that has unmistakably been altered.

They again take the left most path. Down this way the torches been to get farther apart until they are gone completely. Moving as quietly as they can with all of their gear they feel the tunnel start to rise. They stop when they hear a noise up ahead of them.

There are two kobolds sleeping, leaning up against the wall. It appears they are guarding another exit. WFT try to slink away before the kobolds notice they are there, but Lou trips over himself, and his armor clangs up and down the halls as he falls to the ground.

The kobolds attack, they advance on the party, but they are dealt with in short order. They are dead before Lou has regained his footing. There was nothing much around the kobolds, except another rope below the opening in the ceiling.

As they finish inspecting the area the hatch at the top of the tunnel opens. Two voices yell down for the rope. Sophia asks her friends if the people up there want them to throw the rope to them, and almost as if the rope was listening to her it begins to rise up. It goes up and coils itself around an eyelet just under the hatch. Two humans in similar looking robes begin to descend into the tunnel.

Even though they could see what was coming half way down the rope the two humans had no choice but to let their attackers get the drop on them. WTF had positioned themselves in a flanking maneuver with two people on each side of the humans. They tried their best to fend off the party, but were bested quickly and tied up.

The What the Friends Adventuring Group tried to show the humans mercy. Even going so far as to tie them up and bring them with them, but the ruckus the prisoners made was liable to alert every person in the area, topside and down. They were being kept alive because WTF wanted answers as to what was going on in these tunnels and what all this had to do with the kobold army.

They threaten the humans with torture. They warned them they would turn them into the city guard. They tried everything they could think of to get them to talk, but the humans’ resolve was strong, and when it became clear they were not going to let the group travel quiet they killed the humans.

Now unburdened, they decided to continue exploring the caves. They head back toward the torches. Down one hall they found what appeared to be barracks, they steered clear of them, because they appeared to be occupied. Down the next hall, they find only a single room. Two incredibly large wooden doors closed at the end of the short tunnel.

Sophia cracks the door and peaks her head inside. Six skeletons guard an even larger stone door, this one with writing on it. Volker take a quick look. He doesn’t really understand the marking too deeply, but he does know that this is a prison spell of some kind. Those door have been made to keep something in.

October 5

Quietly the group decides on a plan of attack. They decide to target the alpha, as injuring or killing him will cause chaos with the rest of the pack. Qiandai and Sophia took the high ground climbing a couple trees. Volker and Lou got as close as they dared, hiding behind two more trees. Once everyone was into position they attacked.

Qiandai cast lullaby. The dire wolves become drowsy right away. Everyone attacks the alpha as planned. Arrows and magic fly toward him, none hitting their mark. The wolves flee, slowed and confused by Qiandai’s spell they do not scatter, and instead they ran single file away from their attackers.

Qiandai cast sleep on the alpha wolf. It falls. Once Volker catches up to the sleeping wolf he drives a dagger into it’s neck. The rest of the group attacks the next wolf all of them missing. Volker ices the path of the second wolf, and the wolf slams into a tree; Lou charges and kills him.

The last two wolves shake off the effects of the lullaby, and are too far ahead to chase after. So the party decides to cut their losses and count their gains. They clean and skin the wolves, storing the meat away as best they can, and begin to make their way to the City of Abbe.

By nightfall, the party reaches the edge of the forest and decide to make camp. Wisely, they each take a watch shift. About thirty minutes into the third shift Qiandai here’s a low growl just outside her field of vision. She begins to sing softly, trying to wake her comrades.

As they begin to rise, the beast charges. The great animal brings its jaw, almost as large as Qiandai, to bear on the gnome. The dire wolf’s tear into her blue flesh, and she goes down. She is able to keep her senses and stave off passing out, but only just.

The others are up and converge on the dire wolf in a furry. To protect their friend, all three press the attack, stabbing, slashing, casting with everything they have. Qiandai scoots away during the flurry, leaving a trail of blood behind her. The wolf bites wildly at everyone it can reach, but it is unable to do any damage. Unsure of who struck the final blow, the wolf dies screaming.

The group takes a moment to catch their wits. Sophia patches up Qiandai’s wounds as best she can. Lou looks over his armor, sighing at it’s inadequacy. Volker consoles Qiandai, and maybe himself a little bit. Qiandai just thanks her lucky stars to be alive. The all decide that is enough sleeping for the night. They make their way into Abbe, slowed some by Qiandai, but she toughs out the pain.

They get to Abbe around mid-morning. With indomitable spirit, Qiandai decides she wants to visit some magic shops around the bazaar. Lou and Volker go off to sell their hides and shop for armor. Sophia decides wander a bit.

Lou and Volker are able to haggle a hefty price for the hides. Enough that his share alone buys him some well made banded armor. Qiandai finds a quaint little shop ran by a nice man. She looks through his baubles, and finds a great treasure in what she knows to be the Horn of Valhalla. Far out of her price range she buys a simple deck of illusions.

Sophia finds herself wandering the back alleys of the market district. With an unusual lack of awareness she steps in some form of excrement. Her exclamation of disgust is overheard by two people talking, all hush hush like, down the alley, a human and a kobold. Before they overheard Sophia she realizes the kobold was speaking of a ‘coming storm.’ They rush off once they’ve been spotted, the kobold in one direction the human in another. Sophia follows the human.

She climbs atop a building to follow from above. He whips around and aims a crossbow at her.

October 1-4

Knocking the dust off, the three new comrades regroup with the rest of the escaped prisoners. They begin discussing their next move when they realize Carl has left without them noticing. In fact, a lot of them are looking to get away from what is left of the camp and head home. Little Timmy tells the group that he must return to his tribe.

Sophia knows of a town about a day’s walk south of where their at. They head for the road, but they decide to keep their distance. Qiandai even had the idea to cover themselves with mud for camouflage. They keep the road in eye shoot, but their efforts to stay hidden fail. They are immediately seen by the first person they see traveling the road.

The human is decked out in armor and is carrying multiple weapons. Sophia is cautious when he calls them out. He introduces himself as Lou Dromat, an adventurer who has recently found himself without a party. He says he heard the commotion in the valley thought he would check it out. The others fill him and agree that he can join them if he would like (though Sophia is still distrusting.)

The now four person party enters the small town. It can barely even be called a town or even a village. There are almost no shops, only a small inn with few rooms, and only a small Follower church. It doesn’t even have a name. But there are people. Mostly farmers who work the land around the town, and a few other smiths and tradesmen.

The party enters the town. Lou sits down to poker game held by some of the locals while Qiandai talks to the innkeeper about using her property to put on a show. They each rent a room out in the inn. Except Sophia who is refused service. By the end of the night Lou and Qiandai were able to make a little bit of money.

The next day the first thing Volker warns the nearby church of the immediate threat of a kobold army just miles away, much to the thanks of the priest. After that the group decides to head. Sophia, not having slept much, picked up a dire wolf trail outside of town. Some of the town’s people had mentioned how they had become a nuisance recently, and the four friends decided it was a good idea to hunt them down. It would help the town and the pelts could fetch a hefty price in the city.

They follow the trail through a small canyon when the ground beneath their feet begins to shake. In the distance a large humanoid figure with antlers emerges from the fog. With each step it takes an earthquake thunders through the valley. They run for shelter.

All four make a beeline for a cave on the wall of the canyon. They watch the giant creature lumber, kicking clouds of dust with each step. They can see it clearly now. It’s wearing armor, and looks like a large human except for the fifteen foot tall deer antlers sticking out of its temples.

The thing sets down its war hammer, rattling the rocks in walls around the party. It sits down with thud and exhales a deep, long sigh like a typhoon. Volker reaches out with his mind and breaks into a cold sweat when he gets a feel for its magical presence. This creature was magic.

Squinting, like it’s hard of seeing, it looked directly at the party, unsettling them. He greeted the party as if he knew them. He went on about being wrong about something.

Volker approached. He asked the giant man what he meant about being wrong, but when the others when two of the others exited the cave the giant man became confused. After both parties realized neither of them knew each other, the giant introduced himself as Archon. When asked what he was his answer was also Archon.

Archon clarified that he was supposed to rendezvous with an angel at this time. They were to exchange information they had gathered about dragons in the area. The fact that they were even on this planet disturbed Archon, but the most troublesome fact was that the angel he was supposed to meet here did not show up. Archon said the most likely possibility was he was dead, which also meant the dragons knew they were scouting this area.

The group asked what they could do to help. Archon looked down at them like he had forgotten they were there. He told them that he shouldn’t have said what he had. Qiandai said that know that they knew couldn’t just pretend like they didn’t. Archon agreed.

Volker asked if he could give them anything that might aid their quest. Archon reached into his knapsack and pulled out what would have been a scroll had it not been forty feet long. The party got nervous when Archon looked to drop it on them, but when he let go it looked like it hung in the air. In reality, it was shrinking as it fell. Volker reached out and grabbed it. It was blank, but it was drenched in magical energy.

With a final parting word Archon left, ascending into the sky in a beam of light.

The party decided then and there to take up the quest. As Qiandai said, they wouldn’t be able to ignore it. The wolf trail was taking them in the direction of a large city anyway. They decided to start there.

After a only short while more of tracking they found the pack of dire wolf. The pack was resting, and the party gathered around to come up with a plan of attack.

1 October

After much deliberation, everyone decided it would be a good idea to attempt to retrieve their belongs. At mention of this a scrawny Human named Carl spoke up telling the party that he could help them. After Carl claims knowledge of powerful magic, they were skeptical. Talking amongst themselves they decided they didn’t have much choice but to trust him, and if he was lying, he wouldn’t be hard to subdue anyway.
Sophia decided to do some recon around the area before they walked into camp. While she was gone the others decided to tend to the group of escaping, mending wounds and quelling fears.

Sophia found it easy to gather intel as the war camp seemed to be completely deserted. Even more disturbing was the banners that flew. Sophia recognized most of them, but there were some she didn’t. All of them in one place is something Sophia would have said was impossible had she not been looking at it here and now. Some these had been warring since the beginning of history, and now here they were together.

Sophia entered the camp. As she got closer to the center of camp she found where all of the troops had gone. They were all standing at the top of a small hill. She was too far away to see what was going on, and she could only see what had to be a fraction of the population amassed here. She decided to keep her distance.
During her search Sophia found what looked like an officer’s tent. Looking around she found mostly maps, nothing she didn’t already know about the area. There were also some marching orders, commanding this officer’s troop the camp. One thing of interest was a dagger, it shone like new.

Finally she found where the kobolds were keeping their confiscated loot. There were storage tents with all kinds of things thrown into it haphazardly, just left to sit. And of course they were the tents closes to the prisoner tents, the only guarded place left in camp. She quickly finds her long bow and the rest of things and sneaks back out of camp.
Meeting back up with Qiandai and Volker she found they were ready to go. Carl and Timmy the Barbarian had also volunteered to help. Sophia positions herself on a cliff overlooking the valley to cover the others with her longbow. Qiandai, Volker, Timmy, and Carl attempt to sneak past the guards, but they soon realize the Timmy is not the stealthiest person. When the guards are alerted to their presence Qiandai jumps on Timmy’s back to engage them while Volker and Carl retrieve their things from the tent.

The kobolds attacked in a wedge formation. Qiandai and Tim are able to hold them off, while arrows almost as long as the kobolds themselves rain down from above. Once they find their things Volker and Carl exit the tent, Volker to assist the battle and Carl begins to dig through his bag, shoulder deep.

Tim takes a hit from a kobold spear, and his eyes fill with bloodlust. Knocking Qiandai off his shoulders he swings his greatclub so fast it might as well have been a sword, cutting through three kobolds. At the same time an arrow skewers another kobold, crown to asshole.

Carl finds what he is looking for. Volker realizes it is a spell scroll. Carl begins to recite the spell, and the scroll burst into flames. He puts his hand to the ground, and the ground begins to sink, causing an avalanche on all sides.

They run. Qiandai hops back on Tim, and they all begin to ascend the oncoming landslide. Timmy is able to hop along the rocks almost effortlessly, Carl struggles a bit but gains his footing and is able to navigate the debris, but Volker slips. He is almost caught, but in the nick of time Timmy is able to pull him from the crumbling stone. Around them they see the valley crumble into itself. From her vantage point Sophia watches a chuck of the massed kobolds sink into the earth.

At the tree line they meet back with Sophia and the rest of the prisoners.

1 October

Everyone woke at roughly the same time. Sophia first, she felt like she was rising up only to open her eyes to darkness. She was blindfolded and bound, and when she tried to move she bumped into a groaning body behind her.

Volker woke when he felt something bump into him. He found himself also bound, but when he tried to wiggle out of his restraints they snaped right off.

When Qiandai woke she wanted to take a moment and let the senses she could use tell her what they could about her surronding. Except one of the people next to her snaps off her bounds. So she takes off her blindfold and sees an old man breaking the binds of other prisoners.

Qiandai was on the opposite side of the other two. When they began to bicker with each other she lept over the rest of the prisoners, and landed next to them.

The three of them quickly took control of the situation, calming their fellow prisoners as they woke up. Qiandai, ever curious, stuck her head out the tent opening to get the lay of the land, and surpirsed the two kobolds standing guard outside their tents. They took stabs at her with their spears as she swept back into the tent, the kobolds following.

Immediately entering into an close quarters melee Sophia grabed the spear of the nearest kobold. They grappled for a few seconds until Qiandai offered her assiatance and they managed to pull the spear away and stab him with it.

The second kobold was dealt with by Volker, whom decided to touch the kobold with a freezing spell. The lizard-man was then finished off by a groutesquely large human, offering his assistance in way of punches.

The bodies hidden and looted Sophia crept out for a little reconissance. The first thing she noticed was that what looked like a kobold army camp was completely deserted. There were tents of all different sizes, but there were no troops. She snuck over to the nearest tent and cut a small slit with her new short spear. In that tent there were more prisoners of all different sapient speices waking up same as in their tent.

Once back with her comrades, and after much deliberation, they decided to try freeing the prisoners. It wasn’t going to be easier. There were at least nine other prisoner tents, most likely guarded. In fact, when Sophia stuck her head out again she saw one kobold scurry off towards the middle of camp.

Regardless of opposition, they decided to go for it.

The new comrades made a break for it. The occupants of the next tent were already figuring out they could escape.

Sophia headed off the group. She slashed at tents with out even stopping. She passed the third tent so quickly she swooped by the guards. He friends were right behind her but losing distance. By the fourth tent she was able to open it up but was cut off by tweleve guards forming a phalanx in order to stop the assualt.

Now being flanked by a phalanx on one side and three more kobolds on another the team decided to cut their loses and run for the woods with the other prisoners.

Sophia grabbed another spear of one attacking kobold. Volker threw up a light spell to distract the three rear attackers. Qiandai cast an illusionary voice spell to sound like a dragon catching every kobold in ear shot off guard. The three booked it, merging with the mass of runners beelining for the trees.

As they looked back they saw the rest of the kobolds begin to slaughter any straglers they could reach, and cut off the escape of everyone now behind their line.